Locking skill styles behind challenger achievement

Nemesis7884

I REALLY dislike this; hear me out

I do understand and like that challenger gives you a reward - I do think skill styles are a horrible choice.

Skill styles are something very basic / elementary to "play the way you want"; build your character, immerse yourself in your power fantasy - so imo they should be available to a wide number of players (besides maybe some very exclusive specialized ones) and challenger achievements are maybe done by 1% of players.... and I doubt this creates an incentive for 99% of players to try it...

Why not - lock it behind the normal vet achievement, which way more players will have an incentive to do then (Which currently for the new dungeons there is hardly any since the monster masks are all pretty meh and hardly anyone uses them anyway anymore)

and rather for vanquisher give things like skins or mounts which are more exclusive?

LunaFlora

Vanquisher achievements are definitely done by more people than you think as they are granted by completing Normal mode.

Conquerer achievements are for Veteran mode completion. Some dungeon conquerer achievements already do give Skins like Depths of Malatar and The Cauldron.

tsaescishoeshiner

Vanquisher is just completing the dungeon on any difficulty. So it's pretty much the most achievable for people who have the content.

Renato90085

the RP player who want vmol skin or beaster personality:first time?

Nemesis7884

Sorry i meant the challenger achievement...getting confused by all the different names...

DenverRalphy

I'm not seeing the connection between "Play the way you want" and skill styles (or any cosmetic item for that matter). And honestly, I'm struggling to understand what's wrong with a skill style being a reward for a Challenger achievement.

Nemesis7884

DenverRalphy wrote: »

I'm not seeing the connection between "Play the way you want" and skill styles (or any cosmetic item for that matter). And honestly, I'm struggling to understand what's wrong with a skill style being a reward for a Challenger achievement.

I think skill styles have a lot to do with character/class/power fantasy...way more than mounts

Soarora

*cracks knuckles*
Hello, it’s me, the person who keeps advocating for challenger rewards and was overjoyed at skill style challenger rewards.

Let me first of all state that the new dungeons both do not have challenger rewards again. As in no reward for doing them at all, just achievement points. Once I complete the HMs I will see if this is something worth complaining about, based on HM difficulty (easy = need challenger reward).

Now, let me tell you a story. I was once a casual player. My build was terrible, I ran heavy armor on a DPS, I didn’t even have all my attributes in, etc. I got kicked from my fair share of dungeons for my miserable damage. But there was one thing that I wanted to get for a Dro’M-Athra character… the Worm Wizard personality. I used the dungeon finder, running Fang Lair (which I already did a lot before), trying to get the reward through PuGging. But I couldn’t. It was too disorganized, too random of groups, other people didn’t necessarily want to try for challenger. I needed a next step. I found a dungeon guild. In this guild, I found friends. I learned. I grew. I now have every dungeon trifecta and I am now the GM of this guild.

If there were no challenger rewards, I cannot say for certain I ever would have joined this guild. I might have stayed PuGging forever with no goal that I felt I could even try to accomplish. It was the stepping stone for me between a vet pug life and doing HMs and later trifectas.

Challengers are not for the 1%. People love throwing this number out but it comes from nowhere. Trifectas I doubt are even done by only the 1%. But trifecta-capable people aren’t doing challengers, no, we go straight for trifecta. We only do challengers for people who aren’t trifecta-ready and want the challenger achievement. Challengers are achievable for anyone who can complete the hard mode. You do speedrun and no death in a separate run. Heck, if your group is really bad at not dying, you can do speedrun in its own run and barrier spam (but you’ll probably get speedrun even with barrier spamming).

People complain of the two challenger personality rewards. We used to get skins and personalities for challengers and now we get actually straight-up absolutely nothing. Skill styles were the perfect compromise. You don’t “need” it for your character (you can just use a different color, like purple wall instead of green on an arcanist— purple is arcanist’s accent color) but you might want it enough to try to get the hard mode. It entices people, just like I was enticed, to grow past veteran pugging. Believe in yourself, find a guild or a group, don’t complain because you can’t do a challenger. You can. Trust me.

Edit: and I know you said you support challengers having rewards but I highly doubt ZOS will go back to making it a skin, personality, etc. because of the same “I need it for my roleplay but I don’t think I’m good enough so I’m not going to try” problem. If a roleplayer doesn’t want the challenger reward, they won’t try to do the challenger, so it can’t just be an ugly reward that “endgame dungeon players” wouldn’t even show off because we’re ignoring challengers exist by going straight for tris. If the reward is too desired, then people complain. Have to walk a very fine line here, though anything at all is better than nothing, ZOS.

tomofhyrule

The upcoming dungeons reward the skill style for the normal complete, not the challenger. It's only the last set that put them on the Speed/HM/nodeath.

Anyway, I'm totally in the camp that unrelated RP cosmetics - personalities, skill styles, etc - should not be gated behind anything higher than the vet complete. For higher level things, maybe put a cosmetic that is specific to that dungeon that wouldn't really be useful to RP, like the current skins we get that are kinda useless unless we want to look like the dungeon mobs and nobody would really need to RP with, but general RP stuff is kinda annoying to lock behind hard content.

I'll admit, I totally got into dungeons specifically because I needed the Beast personality, and I stayed after that. But I also realize that I'm not everyone. I'm the kind of person people will point to and say "look! people get into endgame because they want RP stuff and they wouldn't have otherwise!" But I also realize that I'm capable of endgame stuff, and not every RP person is. It is really uncool to essentially say "hey, I know you're old and arthritic and only have one working arm, but because of that you're not able to RP. We only allow good players to RP with us."

But looking at the Lep/Exiled ones? The Lep challenger gives the watery Grand Healing, and the Exiled challenger gives the green Wall.
Why?
There's nothing in Lep Seclusa (a desert theme) that implies water at all, and Exiled doesn't have a green theme. Those rewards definitely look like someone put them in for the sake of putting in rewards, not putting them in for specific dungeons. That I can agree is annoying, since there's no reason for either to be there besides gatekeeping those rewards behind a hard achievement.

tsaescishoeshiner

I'd agree that Skill Styles being more accessible is nicer. I don't mind Challenger achievements having worthwhile, exclusive rewards, but Skill Styles do benefit character identity and roleplay in a way where it would be nice if it was locked to a Conqueror or side content achievement.